Taobao, Yahoo Japan Look for eBay-Style Heft

By

Loretta Chao in Hangzhou, China, and

Daisuke Wakabayashi in Tokyo

Updated May 10, 2010 10:16 p.m. ET

Taobao.com, the popular Chinese Internet shopping service, is poised to make its first major push abroad in a deal with Softbank Corp.'s Yahoo Japan Corp. that is ultimately aimed at creating one of the world's biggest online marketplaces.

Beginning in June, merchants on Taobao, a unit of China's Alibaba Group, will be able to pay a fee to have their product listings translated and hosted on a section of Yahoo Japan called "China Mall," giving them access to the Japanese site's 60 million users. Yahoo Japan's...